The present invention generally relates to large area, or panoramic, cockpit displays and even more particularly relates to such displays having multiple image projectors illuminating a common viewing screen.
In the past, designers of avionics displays have endeavored to provide larger and larger display devices to better provide for enhanced situation awareness for flight crews. The use of projection displays in cockpits is gaining many followers because of their recognized ability to provide large area, or panoramic, displays. One method for creating large, high resolution displays is to illuminate a single viewing screen with multiple image projectors, These multiple projector images may be arranged as contiguous non-overlapping, partially overlapping, or totally overlapping image segments. All such configurations may be referred to as tiled image displays. The resulting large image, being comprised of several smaller images, may be referred to as a composite image. While these displays have many advantages, they also have significant drawbacks.
Tiled projection displays must maintain a high degree of alignment precision to provide the superior performance necessary for avionics enhanced situation awareness displays. However, the cockpit is not a mechanically static or benign environment. In-flight turbulence, forces of impact upon landing and other forces resulting from maneuvering the aircraft can be substantial, especially for smaller aircraft and most especially, for fighter aircraft used in operation on-board aircraft carriers. These forces can cause mechanical displacement of the projectors, viewing screens, and other components. Normal variations in aircraft temperature can also cause the projectors, or their images, to move.
Consequently, there exists a need for dynamic alignment of tiled projection displays.
It is an object of the present invention to provide tiled projection displays having a superior image alignment characteristic.
It is a feature of the present invention to utilize a multi-axis adjustable beam deflector.
It is an advantage of the present invention to optically align tiled projected images.
It is another feature of the present invention to include a static compensator.
It is another advantage of the present invention to reduce aberration corrections required for unequal optical path lengths.
It is yet another feature of the present invention to include electro-mechanical gimbal drive motors and gimbal angle sensing devices.
It is yet another feature of the present invention to include electro-optical sensing devices for detecting and measuring undesired image displacement.
It is yet another advantage of the present invention to provide a fully functional tiled projection display system which is capable of in-flight adjustment to compensate for misalignment.
It is yet another advantage of the present invention to provide misalignment correction in an automated manner that eliminates manual alignment operations.
It is still yet another feature and advantage of the present invention to provide a means for mechanically-isolated, independently mounted projectors and display screens.
It is still yet another advantage of the present invention to provide for easy mounting of aligned systems.
The present invention is an apparatus and method for aligning tiled projection images, which is designed to satisfy the aforementioned needs, provide the previously stated objects, include the above-listed features and achieve the already articulated advantages. The present invention is carried out in a xe2x80x9cmisaligned image-lessxe2x80x9d manner in a sense that the time that a misalignment condition is allowed to exist has been greatly reduced.
Accordingly, the present invention is a tiled projection display system which utilizes a multi-axis adjustable optical beam deflector.